In an increasingly digital world, access to the internet is becoming an essential tool for our personal, social and economic development. Yet, for many, this is still out of reach. Today, millions of children around the globe, lack connectivity, creating a barrier to their access to educational and other opportunities. This is a digital divide: a gap that reinforces social and economic inequalities, leaving too many children behind.

Today is the first step in the activation of the Giga Connectivity Centre, a hub for global efforts geared towards connecting schools to the internet.

Giga is hosting a series of hackathons starting in January 2025, to build on its open source solutions for bridging the digital divide. The hackathon series, implemented by NewNative, a community platform dedicated to advancing AI innovation, aims to accelerate Giga’s connectivity efforts by fostering collaborative problem-solving among AI scientists, technologists, entrepreneurs, policymakers, and civil society actors.

The Giga Technology Centre in Barcelona recently hosted the second Government Technology Exchange Programme (GTEP), a four-day focus on the tools and services developed by Giga to facilitate school connectivity.

Global internet connectivity saw steady but uneven progress in 2024, according to the latest edition of “Measuring digital development: Facts and Figures 2024,” an annual compendium of the most important ICT indicators gathered by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the UN agency for digital technology.

Next week, Giga is participating in the Africa Tech Festival in Cape Town from November 12 to 14. Giga will be represented across a diverse range of talks and panels throughout the festival, which focuses on how tech integration is delivering real-world impact through enterprise excellence and socioeconomic development.

In this special conversation, our Giga Botswana Programme Officer, Kudzani Nthekela, caught up with IT Principal Technical Officer Boitshwarelo V. Golekanye, and IT Technical Officer Moatlhodi Anderson Modikele – two Giga supporters from the Department of ICT and Media Services (ICTMS), of Botswana’s Ministry of Education and Skills Development (MESD).

Through its goal of connecting all schools to the internet by 2030, Giga seeks to help equip children and young people with the skills to flourish in today’s increasingly digital economy. In its estimates, the World Bank expects 60% of future jobs will require digital skills.

Giga is making great strides in closing the digital divide. Since 2019, Giga, a partnership between UNICEF and ITU to connect all schools to the internet, has successfully helped connect more than 14,500 schools and nearly 7.8 million young people to the internet.